Archive for year: 2017

There is tale of a yogi, who had spent years in a Himalayan cave on retreat. He was meditating for a long time. One day a traveller came by and, seeing the yogi, asked him what he was doing. “I am meditating on patience,” the yogi said. “In that case” replied the traveller, “you can […]

We demonstrate leadership in all our decisions, actions, and behavior. Our decisions are very much steered by the feelings we attach to our thoughts. The thoughts are generated by our assumptions, which are formed by beliefs, values. Whatever we see and perceive is the evidence of believes through behavior.

We filter out the behaviors or observed things on which we do not believe, wherefrom the statement, like „unbeliaveable“ may coming.

Our perception lenses are shaped by -among others- with family patterns, cultural values, environmental factors, religious trainings, all kind of conditioning, etc. Consequently everyone has its own perception lens.

Whatever is seen and observed is eventually relative. Human relationship is relative too. Also the communication is relative.

Everyone creates its own reality through its perception. So, perception is reality. Whether we like it or not.

The challenge is accepting/embracing the reality. That makes the difference for a leader.

In leadership development it is crucial to understand the components of our own perception lens and their impact on our behavior. Once we look at it have the clarity, we can take necessary action to work on changing the behavior or changing the believe.

Here is a small exercise you can make use of it as a leader for yourself or with your team. The idea is increasing the awareness…and having continuous dialog on it.

Beforehand: please create a trustful, respectful environment and ask for the permission of participants to run this personal, provoking exercise. People should feel safe.

I call this the ladder of perception. Here are the steps:

Identify a remarkable event, where a second person was involved. It does not matter whether positive, negative or neutral event. It works best with an event, where conflict was, but again, it does not matter, since the process is the same.

What was this event? Just write down.

What did you do? Just write down.

What were your feelings, before you did something and during your action? Just write down.

What were your thoughts at that time? Just write down.

Wherefrom did those thoughts come? What did you assumed, so that you thought the way you think? Just write down.

Why did you do this assumption? Just write down, like: I had this assumption, because …(here comes the belief)…

Now, invite yourself or your team to find a partner and share your findings.

What did you discover? What is determining your actions, behavior?

What can we do? How to deal with our perceptionlenses?

Have a dialog, dialog and the process is the key. That creates awareness, builds new culture.

What may happen with us is to check in our database/thoughts (values, beliefs, experiences..) whether we had similar problem as she and what were the consequences of that problem in our case. Everything what she says is internally interpreted, evaluated by us.

With this information we get very much involved in the conversation and we sympathize with her.

This moment can be a good sign for not listening. Yes, this is not listening; it is the start of dealing with ourself, with our thoughts. If the problem is not fitting into our „list“ of „advices“ we get irritated. Irritation comes from fear and we feel out of control.

What is out of control?

…

So, what to do not to fall into the trap of „being out of control“?

create an intention to be curios.

be courageous to explore new territories.

and, „see“ that you are at no time out of control, since there is NO control at all

What do we do when we listen?

We listen what she says,

We listen to the tone of what she says,

We listen to our heart, body what it says, without judging

We do this by letting go of the desire to stabilize, control the life, which is continuously changing.

This way of listening supports your colleague. She sees the problem with clarity, which gives her more confidence to solve it. She gains more trust towards you as a leader.

You as a leader have proven again your trust to your colleague, that she can solve problems and by listening you have learned a lot more about yourself as a leader.

You have extended your new areas to discover.

„Great leader have great teams“ is no more an illusion once your intention is stronger than your fear.